Kendra K. Albert, an affiliate of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, urged audience members at a Harvard Law School event Tuesday to examine critically the use of legal terminology in casual settings outside the court of law.

Albert defined these “legal talismans” as “a legal term of art, out of place, invoked to make or justify substantive decisions that do not involve formal legal processes.”

Albert, a 2016 Law School graduate, cited free speech and defamation as two examples of terms that individuals and organizations frequently cite outside legal contexts to defend their non-legal decisions. They added that the use of “legal talismans” leads individuals to lose sight of the often discriminatory history of the laws they are casually referencing.

Albert, who uses the gender pronoun “they,” explained that, historically, laws have criminalized calling a woman an adulterer, a straight person gay, and a white person black as defamation…

“I really liked when [Albert] started to unpack all these cultural meanings behind the terms ‘defamation’ or even ‘free speech,’ that there was a sexist bias, a racist bias behind those legal terms that you use constantly,” Bellon said.